Transcript
00:00:02 Speaker 1
Seems to be working well. How did you get started and when did you get started in the? I see you have a certificate there of this year to you in 1920.
00:00:17 Speaker 2
I’m just trying to recall exactly what did happen.
00:00:21 Speaker 2
I came in through the the technical end.
00:00:24 Speaker 2
I was trained for the Navy.
00:00:28 Speaker 2
And a lot of my training was had to do with the with the communications, right, so.
00:00:35 Speaker 1
And you had joined the Navy during.
00:00:36 Speaker 1
The first war of World War.
00:00:37 Speaker 2
No, actually I ran away from from Naval College in Halifax.
00:00:43 Speaker 2
My home was in Toronto, right away from Naval College to at the age of 15 years and and three months to go overseas.
00:00:53 Speaker 2
And as a single man and.
00:00:57 Speaker 2
I’d I’d had a little radio in Naval College, and that’s why I went into signals. When I came back out, when I returned home in 1919, I was, I took a course in radio to legacy and.
00:01:18 Speaker 2
I never didn’t get to go to see as a really delicate operator.
00:01:24 Speaker 2
I was posted to coastal radio stations, mostly the direction finding in fact, so I entered broadcasting in a rather peculiar way of I was sent from Halifax on Chebucto Head to be exact.
00:01:44 Speaker 2
To Western Canada for the opening of a a patrol, an air patrol for forest.
00:01:52 Speaker 2
Forest fire prevention and while there I was under the command of a very quite a distinguished technician, a man who’s remember where he still.
00:02:04 Speaker 2
Lives, I think. And.
00:02:05 Speaker 2
As Bill grant.
00:02:07 Speaker 1
We we back in the military service again?
00:02:10 Speaker 1
No, no.
00:02:12 Speaker 2
This was operated by ex military people.
00:02:17 Speaker 2
We are operated almost as a paramilitary unit this.
00:02:21 Speaker 1
Well, that that’s what I that’s what I say.
00:02:22 Speaker 2
This like thing.
00:02:23 Speaker 1
You say I was only the commander.
00:02:24 Speaker 2
Of this?
00:02:26 Speaker 2
Well, it was.
00:02:27 Speaker 2
It was civilian.
00:02:29 Speaker 2
But everybody in it was fresh out of the services.
00:02:33 Speaker 1
Well, of course that’s.
00:02:34 Speaker 1
That’s where all of the technical and trained people came from at.
00:02:37 Speaker 2
That point.
00:02:39 Speaker 2
So I had two years in this forest patrol.
00:02:41 Speaker 2
We worked through the summer and along the western slopes of of of the Rockies and.
00:02:51 Speaker 2
And in the winter we spent in Ottawa developing new equipment.
00:02:57 Speaker 2
For the purpose, and it was during these trips that these Ottawa experiments that we got involved in voice and we actually put on one concert for a garden party, Governor General’s garden party, they had a booth.
00:03:16 Speaker 2
Where you could hear actually hear these voices you’re seeing now.
00:03:20 Speaker 2
Remember we had it for testing.
00:03:22 Speaker 2
We had one little tin gramophone.
00:03:25 Speaker 2
And one record.
00:03:28 Speaker 2
And I can even remember the two sides.
00:03:31 Speaker 2
I think one was when my baby smiles at me, the other side.
00:03:35 Speaker 2
Was ball or ball?
00:03:37 Speaker 1
For the Governor General.
00:03:39 Speaker 2
And we just kept flipping it over the back.
00:03:42 Speaker 2
Well, Bill Grant got involved in building, I guess one of the first.
00:03:48 Speaker 2
Radio stations.
00:03:49 Speaker 2
I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily the first, but one of the first.
00:03:51 Speaker 2
In the West.
00:03:54 Speaker 2
It’s the one that eventually became CFCN.
00:03:57 Speaker 2
And he asked me to join him, and I was stationed at the time at this Chebucto head direction finding station.
00:04:05 Speaker 2
So I left the government service and joined him.
00:04:07 Speaker 2
And we were a two man staff.
00:04:11 Speaker 2
And that’s all it was so.
00:04:13 Speaker 1
Well, that that’s one more than Burt Hooper has CKCK.
00:04:20 Speaker 2
And from from then we we went on.
00:04:24 Speaker 2
I was joined CSFAC in the capacity of.
00:04:34 Speaker 2
Chief engineer copyrighter, announcer, janitor and the program director that’s with was with tiny Elephant.
00:04:46 Speaker 1
Well, at the CFCN, when you started with sort of equipment, did you have with the what was?
00:04:47 Speaker 2
OK.
00:04:51 Speaker 2
The entirely homemade.
00:04:53 Speaker 2
Grant built it all himself.
00:04:55 Speaker 2
If I had a whack at it too, but it was a of a type that this was before crystals.
00:05:03 Speaker 2
See and if we were to open the window and the transmitter building, the frequency would change.
00:05:10 Speaker 2
Everybody would have to retune, no.
00:05:13 Speaker 1
And that wasn’t the easiest thing to do in those days at the home system.
00:05:17 Speaker 2
And all the.
00:05:18 Speaker 2
All the receivers were squealers you’ve seen them and they’re the feedback type.
00:05:25 Speaker 1
So you had to adjust the the several circuits, make sure they were in line.
00:05:28 Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
00:05:34 Speaker 2
That’s where I’m so I started.
00:05:36 Speaker 2
As I say, I came in through the technical end and I then went on to from program Director A.
00:05:46 Speaker 2
Eventually I became a sort of a.
00:05:48 Speaker 2
I guess you’d call it sort of a doctor for sick radio stations.
00:05:54 Speaker 2
My my outfit.
00:05:55 Speaker 2
Taylor Person Carson would send me whenever they acquired the rights to operate a new station, and it’s usually the person sent out to get it started.
00:06:07 Speaker 2
Which was a bit frustrating in.
00:06:09 Speaker 2
The way because just.
00:06:12 Speaker 2
When the thing was getting rolling, it was time for maybe a little golf or something.
00:06:16 Speaker 2
I would promptly shifted to somewhere else so I would start from.
00:06:19 Speaker 2
The English.
00:06:19 Speaker 1
Scratch the the equipment in in general was was putty by to these standards was awfully, awfully primitive, wasn’t.
00:06:26 Speaker 2
Oh yeah.
00:06:26 Speaker 2
Oh, yes, of course it was, yeah.
00:06:32 Speaker 2
We I think it’s from Calgary.
00:06:35 Speaker 2
We’ve got our first factory made transmitter that would be in CFC.
00:06:44 Speaker 1
But he had he had a tremendous with the old flat top antennas.
00:06:46 Speaker 1
He had a tremendous sky wave, but you’re never quite sure which which you were getting locally, as I understand.
00:06:52 Speaker 2
Yes, that’s right.
00:06:54 Speaker 2
That of course, as I was mentioning, DX was the thing used to glory in carriage from far away places.
00:07:01 Speaker 2
You know, we’re saying we picked up your.
00:07:03 Speaker 2
Signal and we we do special programs.
00:07:07 Speaker 2
The middle of the night just for that purpose, you know, said trying to see how far.
00:07:11 Speaker 2
We could reach.
00:07:12 Speaker 1
Well, what was there a sort of convention among broadcasters that say in North America, everybody on 600 would sign off one night a week except this one station, which would be left on the air for the exit purposes.
00:07:25 Speaker 2
Well, there may have been.
00:07:26 Speaker 2
I don’t recall that it could be.
00:07:31 Speaker 2
It’s a lot of fun.
00:07:33 Speaker 1
Everybody says that everybody says that.
00:07:35 Speaker 1
Now, is it as much fun today for the people because you were you were doing, you were doing terrible things.
00:07:40 Speaker 2
All right.
00:07:41 Speaker 1
You know, like working 18 hours a day and building your own equipment and selling advertising and sweeping the floor and putting the transmitter on.
00:07:51 Speaker 1
Why was it so much fun?
00:07:52 Speaker 1
Because you were killing yourself, supposedly.
00:07:55 Speaker 2
It was.
00:07:56 Speaker 2
It was the.
00:07:57 Speaker 2
It was a lot of fun, uh.
00:08:03 Speaker 2
For instance, we didn’t have very much live tell stations in those days.
00:08:08 Speaker 2
We had the odd bit.
00:08:09 Speaker 2
Remember we had one program when I was at CKCK Regina, when I took over the first time I heard this program, I thought give it the ax until I found out that it had the.
00:08:24 Speaker 2
Thank you.
00:08:25 Speaker 2
This was a Sunday morning amateur.
00:08:28 Speaker 2
And it was all almost all ethnic stuff, you know, that were Hungarians and Romanians and people with all their name, their or their own instruments, you know.
00:08:33 Speaker 1
All right.
00:08:40 Speaker 2
And it was amazingly popular.
00:08:44 Speaker 2
People would go to church Sunday morning, then they.
00:08:48 Speaker 2
Group up together and visit the home of somebody who had a radio set.
00:08:52 Speaker 2
You see and sit around and listen to this two hour Sunday morning program of all of of all these amateurs you know.
00:09:02 Speaker 2
And but mostly we had to use rely on records and I think it was our station at CFC Calgary.
00:09:12 Speaker 2
Where we got the idea of instead of justice playing records of putting them together.
00:09:19 Speaker 2
In some sort of cohesive fashion.
00:09:23 Speaker 2
And so we developed programs all built with gramophone records, largely imported such things as.
00:09:30 Speaker 2
The the review Deville Lablabi program, which was a typical English Music Hall affair, you know, complete with, with recorded applause and everything, you know.
00:09:42 Speaker 2
And another one was called Cafe Franz Joseph with.
00:09:51 Speaker 2
All Viennese music with German singers and the very best of drums, waltz, music and that.
00:10:01 Speaker 2
Sort of.
00:10:01 Speaker 2
I think and we even hired an announcer with a German accent.
00:10:08 Speaker 1
The only.
00:10:12 Speaker 1
Probably the only station in the country could have gotten a job.
00:10:17 Speaker 1
Well, you, you you started out originally with really with telephone receiver.
00:10:21 Speaker 1
Your telephone most pieces as your microphone.
00:10:25 Speaker 2
Well, something like that.
00:10:27 Speaker 2
Well, you took the insides out of them and not them on the board.
00:10:31 Speaker 2
And then we got the the static microphone, see.
00:10:37 Speaker 2
And from then on I develop.
00:10:39 Speaker 1
Yeah, these are long, long from the original ones.
00:10:48 Speaker 2
Our recording and 1st recording equipment we had is it cut directly into the wax into the composition.
00:10:58 Speaker 1
Will there be the old transcription, the 1516 inch transcription?
00:11:02 Speaker 2
Yes, soft blanks that we could use, we could cut, cut and use direct.
00:11:08 Speaker 2
They they’re only good for two or three planes and they were finished because the material is so soft.
00:11:13 Speaker 1
Well, that well, that was until the 1930s.
00:11:16 Speaker 2
That would be it just.
00:11:18 Speaker 1
Could be really after after the after the.
00:11:25
Thank you.
00:11:25 Speaker 2
And the.
00:11:26 Speaker 2
The transcriptions were coming in at that time.
00:11:29 Speaker 2
We’re beginning to get a few transcription for I forget where The Lone Ranger started.
00:11:35 Speaker 2
Then that sort of thing that’s beginning to come along and the equipment we used for playing was old movie.
00:11:36 Speaker 1
Hold on.
00:11:43 Speaker 2
Movie theater equipment.
00:11:47 Speaker 2
This was before RCA gave us the good material for for proper control room stuff.
00:11:51 Speaker 1
Maturity, Wilson.
00:11:55 Speaker 1
Well, news didn’t play a very large part in the early days of radio, and the radio was essentially entered damage.
00:12:00 Speaker 1
When I say knew it and we knew that we know you did a lot of remotes, you did a lot of dance band, you opened bridges and stores and and what have you.
00:12:09 Speaker 1
But with you?
00:12:09 Speaker 2
Oh yes, centric broadcast and uh and the things of that sort and that.
00:12:13 Speaker 1
And he had to be pretty strong to go out and do a remote.
00:12:16 Speaker 2
Too well, yes.
00:12:20 Speaker 2
Yes, the equipment was pretty bulky.
00:12:24 Speaker 2
Our big thing, of course, was the Calgary Stampede, the parade and the and the Stampede.
00:12:31 Speaker 2
They were big things, and when I went to Regina, we we actually set up a remote studio and they where they had their at the the annual fair, you know.
00:12:43 Speaker 2
Regina exhibition.
00:12:45 Speaker 2
We sell the Glass studio was called so everybody could see what went on last night.
00:12:50 Speaker 1
It was probably the biggest attraction at the exhibition.
00:12:53 Speaker 2
That would be.
00:12:57 Speaker 2
But 193637.
00:13:00 Speaker 1
Well, when?
00:13:01 Speaker 1
When he?
00:13:01 Speaker 1
When he went into broadcasting.
00:13:03 Speaker 1
What were you getting paid?
00:13:11 Speaker 2
About $125 a.
00:13:13 Speaker 1
Month that was, that was a good thing.
00:13:15 Speaker 2
Yes, it wasn’t bad when I got married, I was getting a.
00:13:20 Speaker 2
140.
00:13:22 Speaker 2
He did all right on that, yeah.
00:13:23 Speaker 1
Sure that the numbers don’t matter so much as no.
00:13:25
Right.
00:13:28 Speaker 2
He’s gonna scratch him. He’s.
00:13:29 Speaker 2
He’s got no sense at.
00:13:29 Speaker 1
Well, I I know I.
00:13:31 Speaker 1
I’m I’m used to catching.
00:13:34 Speaker 1
I know how to how to handle.
00:13:36 Speaker 1
He bothers me on both his ears, but essentially, if if you if you leave your hand, you know quiet, they can’t do much damage to it.
00:13:45 Speaker 1
It’s when you try to jerk it away that they really.
00:13:47 Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
00:13:47 Speaker 1
It’s it’s, yeah.
00:13:54 Speaker 1
Well, that’s, you know, really you ever being, as you say, very well paid for those for those these.
00:14:01 Speaker 2
I guess so.
00:14:02 Speaker 2
That was the Calgary Herald that was playing then and I don’t think the southern press was particularly noted for their high pay, but it’s the we got along quite well.
00:14:16 Speaker 1
When newspapers seem to have and still do, but not to as big as their own.
00:14:21 Speaker 1
Some stations was mainly a protective measure in their purchases.
00:14:24 Speaker 2
Oh yes, very definitely.
00:14:26 Speaker 2
They saw this as as a threat and they decided to control the threat.
00:14:32 Speaker 2
That if it was going to be advertising, they wanted it, they wanted to control it.
00:14:37 Speaker 2
And actually at 1st until they began to realize the possibility they we were deliberately suppressed.
00:14:48 Speaker 2
And I think the place where this went on was the longest degree was in Nelson, BC.
00:14:54 Speaker 2
Where from many years after the other stations were really going, the paper kept dumbed down on their little radio station and that just wouldn’t let them get going at all.
00:15:08 Speaker 1
Well, there were.
00:15:08 Speaker 1
There were a number of prohibitions which I suspect when newspaper inspired one was with.
00:15:13 Speaker 1
Price product.
00:15:14 Speaker 2
That’s right, yes.
00:15:15 Speaker 1
Situation and the second was CP for many, many years was not permitted.
00:15:20 Speaker 1
To sell news so you.
00:15:22 Speaker 1
So you went into BP was was one service we were involved in any station with Trans Radio news and the states was in.
00:15:32 Speaker 2
I really don’t remember I I suspect.
00:15:35 Speaker 2
Maybe we were.
00:15:39 Speaker 2
I’m not too sure.
00:15:40 Speaker 1
What friends Radio was the one that would I I think it was based in New York, but it came by by ear, by short way.
00:15:48 Speaker 1
Into the.
00:15:49 Speaker 2
No, I I don’t recall ever having a a receiving news by by our own receiver, our own shortwave receiver.
00:16:01 Speaker 2
Isn’t that the one that was found to be in German?
00:16:05 Speaker 1
Well, it was shut down on that basis.
00:16:08 Speaker 1
I’m not too sure.
00:16:09 Speaker 1
The Canadian Press didn’t have it shut down, but that that it was, it was shut down on the grounds that it was poor German, you know, pro Nazi eventually toward the.
00:16:21 Speaker 2
Yes, seems to me they were charged with the communicating with submarines or something.
00:16:21 Speaker 1
Toward the starting the word.
00:16:26 Speaker 1
You know well and with shortwave broadcasting, you can understand your true or false.
00:16:31 Speaker 1
You can understand how the church could arise.
00:16:33 Speaker 2
Oh, yes, yes.
00:16:35 Speaker 1
Could arise in those knees.
00:16:38 Speaker 1
But what?
00:16:38 Speaker 1
What kind of what kind of program you see?
00:16:41 Speaker 1
As we have mentioned records, but there was also and I’m not sure who’s the genesis of this, but there was also a prohibition against recording music or recorded programming after 7:00 o’clock at night for many years and you had to.
00:16:53 Speaker 1
Have live programming.
00:17:02 Speaker 1
I don’t remember that.
00:17:04 Speaker 1
I’ll grant you my memory is is not as good as it shouldn’t be.
00:17:08 Speaker 1
At my age, I just say, obviously that there’s nothing wrong with your memory.
00:17:12 Speaker 2
76 next month.
00:17:15 Speaker 1
Just you’ve got a lot to remember and some.
00:17:17 Speaker 1
Things you have to dump.
00:17:20 Speaker 2
I don’t remember something about that 7:00 o’clock deadline, but it seems to me we’re allowed somewhere.
00:17:25 Speaker 1
Where you are allowed transcription.
00:17:28 Speaker 1
Are you allowed to transcribe programs?
00:17:30 Speaker 1
I think to the extent, but you essentially was.
00:17:34 Speaker 1
It was intended to be alive.
00:17:36 Speaker 1
And of course, that’s that’s when you did the remotes from the dance halls and what have you and you had the local violin teacher, I guess in the class on.
00:17:50 Speaker 2
I do remember distinctly, and this should be the in the whole around 1935 our book. So we had very quite a popular recorded program only by ourselves out of ordinary phonograph records called the British Band concert. And I went on at 9:00 o’clock.
00:18:10 Speaker 2
Every Thursday night, Pat Freeman was the emcee all these were scripted, you know?
00:18:21 Speaker 2
They were.
00:18:22 Speaker 1
Well, so you know, they were scripted.
00:18:22 Speaker 2
I wrote so much stuff.
00:18:29 Speaker 2
This concert, this cafe France Joseph Lighting program so.
00:18:39 Speaker 1
Of course, of course it would.
00:18:40 Speaker 1
Just because there were no recording facilities, there were no delayed broadcast.
00:18:44 Speaker 1
You were on there, alive.
00:18:46 Speaker 1
Did you ever get?
00:18:46 Speaker 1
God, with your tongue stuck between your teeth and.
00:18:51 Speaker 2
I could go on for many hours with the some of the terrible things that embarrassing things have happened that.
00:18:58 Speaker 1
Well, one or one or two of the outstanding ones.
00:19:04 Speaker 2
You’ve probably heard them all because they’re classics.
00:19:09 Speaker 1
But haven’t heard from they’ve heard them from the one that they happened to.
00:19:12 Speaker 2
This was well.
00:19:14 Speaker 2
I think the worst one that ever happened to us.
00:19:22 Speaker 2
We got a live spot.
00:19:25 Speaker 2
Sponsor that wanted alive program, which was a very exceptional thing in those days.
00:19:30 Speaker 2
We had a new a new firm, a new retailer started up in town in the interior decorating and straight drapes and and bugs and the.
00:19:44 Speaker 2
All that sort of thing.
00:19:46 Speaker 2
And we tried.
00:19:47 Speaker 2
Our salesman tried for many months to get to take a program.
00:19:52 Speaker 2
And one day, in the off chance the salesman dropped in and said.
00:19:56 Speaker 2
How about it?
00:19:57 Speaker 2
And to his complete surprise, he said yes.
00:20:01 Speaker 2
We’ll take what we don’t watch our usual.
00:20:02 Speaker 1
Now do I do?
00:20:05 Speaker 2
Square announce with that sort of thing we want.
00:20:08 Speaker 2
You know something like they have in the states.
00:20:10 Speaker 2
They want an orchestra this singer and.
00:20:16 Speaker 2
Properly set up will take half an hour a week.
00:20:20 Speaker 2
So we didn’t quite know how.
00:20:21 Speaker 2
To go down to.
00:20:23 Speaker 2
Producing this so, but we did our best and we got everything ready and rehearsed.
00:20:28 Speaker 2
And of course, when the time came for the.
00:20:31 Speaker 2
For the big program to go on the air, everybody was not terribly on edge, and shortly before it was due to go on the air, Mr.
00:20:41 Speaker 2
sponsor arrives, but misses sponsors and all the little sponsors to watch their program, you see, and which made.
00:20:50 Speaker 2
The poor notes are all jittery.
00:20:53 Speaker 2
You see, I was in the control room.
00:20:57 Speaker 2
Carry my hard.
00:20:57 Speaker 1
Don’t chew my mic cord.
00:21:01 Speaker 1
That’s that’s what.
00:21:01
Got it.
00:21:02 Speaker 1
That’s our no, no.
00:21:06 Speaker 2
And the announcer was in the studio with the band of boys watching the red light.
00:21:14 Speaker 2
He could see him shaking, you know.
00:21:16 Speaker 2
And so finally, the red light.
00:21:19 Speaker 2
And he coached the microphone and his ladies and gentlemen, the following program comes to you through the courtesy of the Calgary Drug and rape every shop.
00:21:37 Speaker 2
That was the first and last.
00:21:38 Speaker 2
Piece of advertising we ever got from the network.
00:21:42 Speaker 2
We never got paid for it and I think it was the best advertising we ever had.
00:21:48 Speaker 2
Yeah, comma.
00:21:49 Speaker 2
Different for you, that was one and.
00:21:53 Speaker 2
There was another in Regina, which has been really told so many times.
00:21:59 Speaker 2
I’m sure you must.
00:22:00 Speaker 2
Have heard it at football.
00:22:04 Speaker 2
Football, I think every station in the country has picked it up and taken it as their own, but it really did happen to us.
00:22:11 Speaker 2
Stopped that.
00:22:16 Speaker 2
We had our sports and also we had a big game, one semi finals coming up you know and with John and his giant playing the blue bombers went.
00:22:28 Speaker 2
Back for the.
00:22:29 Speaker 2
For the right to meet the east and the Great Cup, and this was the big the last big game in the West.
00:22:38 Speaker 2
Our our sports commentator.
00:22:41 Speaker 2
Had the bad luck to go to hospital for an emergency operation just the day before, so we had to scramble around and find somebody who could at least make a stab at calling the game for our audience.
00:22:59 Speaker 2
And the we had nobody on the.
00:23:04 Speaker 2
Staff that could do it.
00:23:06 Speaker 2
But we did have a young manager of a motion picture theater.
00:23:12 Speaker 2
Who was pretty good.
00:23:13 Speaker 2
He he used to do all his own commercials on the air, so he was quite across from the microphone and he was a very ardent football fan and played football himself.
00:23:20
OK.
00:23:26 Speaker 2
So we got we asked Larry what he he liked to take a crack at calling the.
00:23:30 Speaker 2
Game, he said. Sure.
00:23:32 Speaker 2
So we got him up in the booth and as it turned out, it rained all morning.
00:23:39 Speaker 2
And the game that started at 2:00 o’clock and it was the most miserable football game I had ever seen in all my born days.
00:23:47 Speaker 2
This thing, if you know what Saskatchewan Gumbo, Saskatchewan mud is like, it’s, you know, thick clay.
00:23:55 Speaker 2
And it was all turned up.
00:23:57 Speaker 2
It was really a mess.
00:23:59 Speaker 2
You couldn’t even see the numbers under you.
00:24:01 Speaker 2
Orange and nobody could get could get going in this slippery stuff.
00:24:06 Speaker 2
You know, it is the slowest thing.
00:24:08 Speaker 2
And poor Larry trying to make an exciting game out of it and nothing was happening and he was getting more, you know, the whole program was sagging so visibly until one chap, one of the men.
00:24:22 Speaker 2
And the team he was.
00:24:24 Speaker 2
Civil life was a motorcycle policeman.
00:24:27 Speaker 2
He got the ball and actually he kept his feet and started down the field.
00:24:31 Speaker 2
And Larry came to life.
00:24:34
OK.
00:24:35 Speaker 2
And he really started.
00:24:36 Speaker 2
He really got excited.
00:24:37 Speaker 2
He says Vick Murdoch has got the ball.
00:24:39 Speaker 2
He’s going down the field and he’s made 10 yards, 15 yards, 20 yards.
00:24:45 Speaker 2
He’s gonna make it.
00:24:46 Speaker 2
Jesus Christ. He dropped it.
00:24:54 Speaker 2
Well, then, he he picked up and started broadcasting again, and all of a sudden.
00:24:58 Speaker 2
It hit him, you know.
00:25:00 Speaker 1
What do you say?
00:25:00 Speaker 2
Said and he turned to me in the in the the broadcast, he says what they said back then, I said plenty.
00:25:08 Speaker 2
Brother me came back on the station with telephones, were ringing themselves off the wall.
00:25:15 Speaker 2
They, the ministerial association of something to sketch one.
00:25:21 Speaker 2
Tried to have our license rescinded.
00:25:24 Speaker 2
Oh, we had more trouble.
00:25:27 Speaker 1
We got the.
00:25:29 Speaker 1
No, but just broadcasting was really an adventure in those days.
00:25:33 Speaker 2
All it was, it was fascinating.
00:25:37 Speaker 2
I began to lose interest, I think when when the the.
00:25:44 Speaker 2
The rate for ratings.
00:25:47 Speaker 2
Became such that in order to get a a good rating and therefore develop their advertising volume.
00:25:56 Speaker 2
You had to.
00:25:58 Speaker 2
It actually degenerates your program to the lowest common denominator of human intelligence.
00:26:04 Speaker 2
You know, we had to come down to, to the, to the masses, you know.
00:26:13 Speaker 2
And sometimes I thank God for the CBC.
00:26:16 Speaker 2
We hated the ******** in those days.
00:26:18 Speaker 2
Course we fought to them now, but at least they kept the spark alive and did some minority broadcasting.
00:26:27 Speaker 1
But but, but they really broadcasting you doing wasn’t minority broadcasting it just that it was so strange and so new.
00:26:34 Speaker 1
That every way, no matter what you put on.
00:26:37 Speaker 1
You’d have had an audience for it.
00:26:38 Speaker 1
I mean, you, you, you you could have put envy chest and standing on his head quietly for 15 minutes and you’d have had an audience for it.
00:26:44
OK.
00:26:45 Speaker 1
In those days, yeah.
00:26:46 Speaker 2
I suppose so.
00:26:48 Speaker 2
But it gradually became more and more competitive and less and less fun.
00:26:56 Speaker 1
There is a word that everybody I have talked to has used fun.
00:27:00 Speaker 1
It was.
00:27:01 Speaker 2
Fun. Yeah, it really was.
00:27:05 Speaker 1
It seems to me, and I’d like your reaction to it, it seems to me there are two reasons why it is no longer, you know, quote fun.
00:27:13 Speaker 1
One is that the original stations really were, you know, sort of one man operation you.
00:27:20 Speaker 1
You worked for a station.
00:27:23 Speaker 1
With five or six people, if you were lucky, maybe two or three people, if or one person if you were.
00:27:30 Speaker 1
And but but you worked for an entity that existed there in the community.
00:27:34 Speaker 1
Now you’ve got chain, broadcasting, et cetera, et cetera and so forth.
00:27:38 Speaker 1
And secondly, it’s become a business, yes, yes.
00:27:46 Speaker 2
I guess we were not very profit motivated in those days, you know.
00:27:50 Speaker 1
I would think Taylor Pierce from Carson was fairly profit motivated.
00:27:54 Speaker 2
Well, they were, but they they they were smart.
00:27:58 Speaker 2
In that they didn’t interfere with the day-to-day operation of the station.
00:28:02 Speaker 2
I I’ve never known a part one of the partners.
00:28:07 Speaker 2
In any way to say you should be broadcasting this or you should be broadcasting.
00:28:14 Speaker 2
They were perfectly content to hire a manager on his record and let him do what?
00:28:21 Speaker 1
He wanted to do.
00:28:23 Speaker 2
Only one wanted was a a pretty picture at the right hand, bottom corner of the of the state.
00:28:33 Speaker 2
They’re very good that way.
00:28:35 Speaker 2
They they felt they were not broadcasters, but they they could hire broadcasters and we got along remarkably well.
00:28:45 Speaker 2
Harold Carson himself had.
00:28:48 Speaker 2
Was one of the.
00:28:50 Speaker 2
The best men.
00:28:51 Speaker 2
I ever met in the field of.
00:28:54 Speaker 2
Employee relations.
00:28:57 Speaker 2
His choice of men was good and he everybody was honored.
00:29:04 Speaker 2
I think to work for him, you know.
00:29:10 Speaker 1
But for there to be team of business, as you know, the original stations were started by newspapers for control.
00:29:15 Speaker 1
They were started by.
00:29:17 Speaker 1
Factory salesman who wanted to sell radio sets and batteries.
00:29:20 Speaker 1
They were started by department stores for God knows what we by churches who wanted to spread the gospel.
00:29:28 Speaker 1
No, but nobody expected to make any money from the broadcasting operation itself.
00:29:34 Speaker 1
But as it became more of a business.
00:29:37 Speaker 1
It seems to me the fun went out of.
00:29:40 Speaker 2
Uh, yes, but.
00:29:41 Speaker 2
Although not immediately, not for quite a long while.
00:29:45 Speaker 2
I I think it was when there were so many stations competing for the same dollar.
00:29:52 Speaker 2
That that the programs.
00:29:58 Speaker 2
Deteriorate it in my mind.
00:30:02 Speaker 2
To the point where they were, you know, on almost on a dead level, they were catering, as I say, is the lowest common denominator and that’s where the.
00:30:11 Speaker 2
Most votes were.
00:30:12 Speaker 1
Well, of course you don’t have any problems anymore and probably would we?
00:30:17 Speaker 1
No, you, you, you people did have programs you had, you know, you had all sorts of.
00:30:23 Speaker 1
Musical groups and dramatic groups and what you name when you had it, it doesn’t exist anymore in private radio, and the CBC still tries to do some of it, although they’re beginning to.
00:30:34 Speaker 1
To move it off into the hinterland too.
00:30:39 Speaker 2
Yes, we are in our family here and now.
00:30:43 Speaker 2
When you listen to.
00:30:45 Speaker 2
AM radio at all.
00:30:47 Speaker 2
You’re listening only to FM.
00:30:53 Speaker 2
I think there’s only three stations.
00:30:56 Speaker 2
That we have any use for at all.
00:30:58 Speaker 2
One is our.
00:31:00 Speaker 2
Local CFMS, who have a number of periods of day.
00:31:06 Speaker 2
Which are.
00:31:10 Speaker 2
Semi classic uh pops concert and that sort of thing.
00:31:14 Speaker 2
The kind of thing we like with a very strong nostalgic element.
00:31:17 Speaker 1
And the fair one, the kind of thing you were doing day in and day out.
00:31:21 Speaker 1
And you really days?
00:31:23 Speaker 2
We had, that’s one another one is in.
Part 2
Transcript
00:00:02 Speaker 1
Nevada, which has a period from midnight until 2:00 in the morning with this same sort of thing.
00:00:08 Speaker 1
You know, a strong nostalgic element to it.
00:00:12 Speaker 1
And the third is kumu in Honolulu KU.
00:00:16 Speaker 1
They had the most delightful.
00:00:18 Speaker 1
FM state.
00:00:19 Speaker 1
Well, the AFM and a.
00:00:20 Speaker 1
And they do the same thing on both.
00:00:24 Speaker 1
So we carry our little portable with the.
00:00:25 Speaker 1
Same time we go to Hawaii.
00:00:29 Speaker 2
Well the the CRT C has has said recently that FM shall have.
00:00:40 Speaker 2
The sheriff you see has said recently that FM is going to have foreground programming, and I presume by that they mean something that people will actually listen to as opposed to the background.
00:00:54 Speaker 2
You think that the day of?
00:00:57 Speaker 2
If you like live programming variety programming, that is something to listen to.
00:01:03 Speaker 2
As opposed to something to have on.
00:01:07 Speaker 2
Might come back.
00:01:14 Speaker 1
Well, I think it might.
00:01:15 Speaker 1
And I think we’re beginning to see signs of it now.
00:01:21 Speaker 1
We’re beginning to get beyond interview and that sort of thing on this end now.
00:01:28 Speaker 1
Which I don’t think.
00:01:31 Speaker 1
An AM station in.
00:01:33 Speaker 1
In their highly competitive situation, could afford to carry, that’s one.
00:01:41 Speaker 1
One, I think that’s one reason why many am stations have taken on have developed FM stations, so they’d have someplace to put the the things that they couldn’t afford to carry on their own on their regular station.
00:01:58 Speaker 2
But, but is there no longer an audience for a good program and I want to buy good.
00:02:04 Speaker 2
I don’t mean good in the academic sense.
00:02:06 Speaker 2
I’m talking about a funny program like English and Andy or a funny program.
00:02:10 Speaker 2
Like these eases, is there no room on am for this kind of thing or no?
00:02:15 Speaker 2
Is there no audience?
00:02:16 Speaker 2
With us anymore.
00:02:21 Speaker 2
Has it all gone to television?
00:02:23 Speaker 2
I suppose that’s really.
00:02:24 Speaker 1
I’m afraid it has, I’m afraid it.
00:02:26 Speaker 2
Has because I I think I think from time to time that in a in a city for instance, like Vancouver, you have people, you know, keep trapped in their cars for, you know, two hours in the morning, 2 hours in the afternoon.
00:02:40 Speaker 2
Purely in that time period, a 15 minute.
00:02:44 Speaker 2
Program that you can listen to that you can get some enjoyment out of other than just the straight disc jockey who says, you know, and now here’s the latest flight of the time.
00:02:53 Speaker 2
And so on.
00:02:53 Speaker 2
And so the temperature.
00:02:54 Speaker 2
So and so have we not got room in those periods because that’s where most of the most Canadian radios are now encouraged, have we not got.
00:03:03 Speaker 2
Only those in one of those time periods for a real program, money and radio.
00:03:15 Speaker 1
I really don’t know.
00:03:18 Speaker 1
I’ve been over for so long, I’m no longer an intimate touch.
00:03:22 Speaker 1
But I suspect that.
00:03:25 Speaker 1
It would be difficult to find a sponsor.
00:03:29 Speaker 1
For even Leamus and Andy today.
00:03:33 Speaker 2
So what you’d have to have as an Angel of a station owner who would be willing to gamble that this would in fact go.
00:03:39 Speaker 2
On audience.
00:03:40 Speaker 1
Well, there you see there is the beauty of that family.
00:03:43 Speaker 1
Don’t expect to make a profit anyhow, you know.
00:03:47 Speaker 1
Well there, but.
00:03:48 Speaker 2
OK, but isn’t it? Isn’t this what you were doing back in the 1920s? Exactly the same sort of thing. They didn’t expect to make money from radio, and it’s only when it became a profitable operation.
00:03:51 Speaker 1
Why yes, yes, yes.
00:04:01 Speaker 2
That it ceased to be a fun operation, but.
00:04:08 Speaker 1
As I say, we were.
00:04:10 Speaker 1
But bitter enemies of the CBC in those days, and they were doing the things you’re talking about, you know, doing the unprofitable thing while we were still.
00:04:19 Speaker 1
Well, we were trying to make it trying to get by.
00:04:21 Speaker 1
We had to look, we wanted to see.
00:04:23 Speaker 1
That check at the end of the month.
00:04:27 Speaker 1
But nevertheless that they were they they were doing a lot of innovative broadcasting as well, but.
00:04:35 Speaker 1
There seemed to.
00:04:36 Speaker 1
Hit too high over.
00:04:38 Speaker 1
The heads of the.
00:04:40 Speaker 1
Of of most of the people.
00:04:44 Speaker 1
You know.
00:04:45 Speaker 1
And mind you, I think we did too to some extent.
00:04:48 Speaker 1
We tried to be at least reasonably intelligent, but it wasn’t all.
00:04:56 Speaker 1
Country and western as so many stations are today that play nothing else but.
00:05:05 Speaker 2
It’s a great, great knowledge of things you’ve you started back almost well.
00:05:11 Speaker 2
You did.
00:05:12 Speaker 2
You started back before there was voice radio.
00:05:16 Speaker 2
And you’ve come through voice waving.
00:05:17 Speaker 2
You’ve come through television, you’ve come into the age of cable.
00:05:21 Speaker 2
You’ve come into the age of satellites and you know the changes you see.
00:05:25 Speaker 2
You’ve seen it.
00:05:25 Speaker 2
It’s fantastic.
00:05:27 Speaker 2
Do you have any any thoughts or any ideas about what broadcasting is going to be 20 years?
00:05:34 Speaker 1
Not the foggiest, you know.
00:05:38 Speaker 1
I have not even thought of it very much.
00:05:44 Speaker 2
I have an idea.
00:05:44 Speaker 2
It’s going to be grossly different from what we have now, but I’m.
00:05:49 Speaker 2
I don’t know.
00:05:49 Speaker 2
I don’t know.
00:05:49 Speaker 2
What it is going to?
Part 3
Transcript
00:00:01 Speaker 1
The Selkirk collection.
00:00:07 Speaker 1
Of The Pioneers of Selkirk communications.
00:00:15 Speaker 1
The following interview with MV Chestnut was recorded in January 1978 by **** Meisner.
00:00:24 Speaker 2
February the 25th, I guess, yeah.
00:00:27 Speaker 2
I kind of lost track of time and being on the road now for a while.
00:00:31 Speaker 3
I do too.
00:00:32 Speaker 3
It’s one of the features of retirement, you know.
00:00:39 Speaker 2
I’m sitting.
00:00:41 Speaker 2
In or near Sydney, Vic.
00:00:47 Speaker 2
Or Sydney Vancouver Island, to be more precise in the.
00:00:52 Speaker 2
Very large residential office.
00:00:59 Speaker 2
Morris Vandalur chestnut, better known to several generations of broadcasters as fondly just playing chess.
00:01:11 Speaker 3
Never give any other name.
00:01:14 Speaker 2
Just hold on.
00:01:16 Speaker 2
Approximately, did you spend with the organization which we now call Selkirk, which was all Canada and?
00:01:27 Speaker 3
Well, with the stations, I guess it dates back to.
00:01:34 Speaker 3
You know, I can’t absolutely pinpoint a date.
00:01:36 Speaker 2
It doesn’t have to be.
00:01:37 Speaker 3
Exact you know, I can give you a rough idea of how I got into it.
00:01:42 Speaker 3
If that might help.
00:01:44 Speaker 3
I was.
00:01:45 Speaker 3
I joined the army.
00:01:48 Speaker 3
In 1916.
00:01:51 Speaker 3
I was 15 years and four months old.
00:01:55 Speaker 2
I won’t bother spending much time asking you what you did before you started.
00:02:01 Speaker 3
And lagged my head off to get in, of course, and that when I was in, I was a signal I picked up quite a little bit along radio line, just a little.
00:02:13 Speaker 3
And when I came out in 1919, after service in England and France.
00:02:22 Speaker 3
I applied for a course in wireless telegraphy.
00:02:26 Speaker 3
And got it and I spent.
00:02:31 Speaker 3
Some time one.
00:02:34 Speaker 3
One winter on the.
00:02:36 Speaker 3
The East Coast on direction finding station, guiding ships and the and while I was there, there came a call to volunteer for work in the West on Forest Patrol.
00:02:51 Speaker 3
They were people were getting extremely worried about the lot possible loss of the forest on the east.
00:02:56 Speaker 3
Both local and rocky.
00:02:58 Speaker 3
Which, if they ever went, would we lose our wheatlands?
00:03:02 Speaker 3
Yeah, right.
00:03:03 Speaker 3
Because of the wheatlands are dependent on the the rainfall, the the snow melting.
00:03:10 Speaker 2
You’re starting to talk like a gardener.
00:03:13 Speaker 3
So I volunteered and I came out to work to.
00:03:18 Speaker 3
For two summers flying operating the weather, the Telegraph, wireless Telegraph, sure.
00:03:26 Speaker 3
In these patrol aircraft you see and I was working.
00:03:31 Speaker 3
With a well known character, you know by the name W Grant, he’s our section half the head of the.
00:03:35 Speaker 2
Oh yes.
00:03:39 Speaker 3
Of he, he built the whole thing.
00:03:42 Speaker 3
This all the wireless equipment and everything, but out of old.
00:03:46 Speaker 3
First World War stories.
00:03:49 Speaker 3
So I had two summers that first year at Morley, Alberta, and the second year at High River, Alberta.
00:03:56 Speaker 3
They ended up being winter I spent in Ottawa.
00:03:59 Speaker 3
Developing help developing new wireless equipment radio equipment.
00:04:04 Speaker 3
And all that was done was Morse code.
00:04:06 Speaker 3
We didn’t have voice then except the one the one winter development winter.
00:04:07 Speaker 2
Right, right.
00:04:11 Speaker 3
We did an experiment, experimental.
00:04:14 Speaker 3
Wireless telephone and we actually paid a.
00:04:19 Speaker 3
Little tin can.
00:04:21 Speaker 3
Turntable in one record and we put our we kept testing with this record. Somebody phoned up with this. This, for heaven’s sake.
00:04:30 Speaker 3
Would you let me donate you another record for getting so tired of this one and I can still remember the name of the record?
00:04:38 Speaker 3
Anyhow, we did a demonstration for the Governor General, his Governor General Garden party.
00:04:47 Speaker 3
WW Grant, he put in a eventually put in this.
00:04:52 Speaker 3
Radio broadcasting station.
00:04:55 Speaker 3
And asked me to join him and that’s how I got started in radio.
00:04:59 Speaker 3
It was something through the technical.
00:05:00 Speaker 2
End. Yeah, yes, yeah.
00:05:04 Speaker 3
We had a a break up with.
00:05:06 Speaker 3
We had a kind of a partnership being eventually there was a break up and I went into radio repairing.
00:05:14 Speaker 3
And from that point I was asked to join the staff of what is now CFAC in Calgary.
00:05:24 Speaker 3
That would be somewhere around 1935, I guess 3435. They’re books.
00:05:29 Speaker 2
Who was do you recall?
00:05:31 Speaker 2
Who was the manager there?
00:05:32 Speaker 3
At that time, yes, his name was Fred Carlton.
00:05:36 Speaker 3
And I was a friend was with me, and I was with him for about two years, I think.
00:05:43 Speaker 3
And then he.
00:05:45 Speaker 3
Had a little trouble and had to leave.
00:05:48 Speaker 3
And Tiny Elfick who had come in as sales manager, took over as manager.
00:05:53 Speaker 3
And I was his right hand assistant.
00:05:56 Speaker 3
And at that point, I was just about everything.
00:05:59 Speaker 3
I was the program director, the copywriter and the janitor, the chief engineer.
00:06:05 Speaker 2
I didn’t realize Tony had been in Calgary.
00:06:05 Speaker 3
OK.
00:06:08 Speaker 2
I knew of Calgary of tiniest involvement in Winnipeg.
00:06:12 Speaker 2
Edmonton and of course I worked for tiny in Vancouver 100 years ago.
00:06:17 Speaker 3
No, actually, he started in Calgary and a matter of fact, he became quite a big shot with the the, the Calgary Light Opera Association.
00:06:25 Speaker 2
Ohh, that’s where that began.
00:06:27 Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
00:06:27 Speaker 3
Yes, and he said Ohh he did some wonderful work and.
00:06:31 Speaker 3
Even heard from beautiful, beautiful stage presence.
00:06:34 Speaker 2
Where his presence wherever he was.
00:06:40 Speaker 3
So we worked together there and gradually we built up.
00:06:43 Speaker 3
We had some very interesting characters then Bobby Freeland jacked in it.
00:06:53 Speaker 2
Bob Freeland.
00:06:54 Speaker 3
Norman brochel.
00:06:55 Speaker 3
They were all there.
00:06:57 Speaker 2
Haven’t thought of the name Bob Freeland in a very long time.
00:07:00 Speaker 2
What a beautiful voice that man had.
00:07:01 Speaker 3
Oh, a lovely voice, yes.
00:07:03 Speaker 2
Completely irresponsible, but a beautiful voice.
00:07:04 Speaker 3
And the.
00:07:06 Speaker 3
Yeah, I can tell you quite an interesting.
00:07:10 Speaker 3
Anecdote about them, if it.
00:07:12 Speaker 3
If it’s that proposed.
00:07:13 Speaker 3
Or this thing.
00:07:14 Speaker 2
Sure, anything goes.
00:07:18 Speaker 3
Well, it it so happens that that in those days, I guess do it now to some extent.
00:07:24 Speaker 3
There was always a a Christmas Imperial Christmas broadcast which always culminated in The King’s Speech to the to the Commonwealth.
00:07:34 Speaker 3
And the.
00:07:35 Speaker 3
Each section of the of the Commonwealth was assigned.
00:07:40 Speaker 3
A little bit of contribution to this round the world program.
00:07:45 Speaker 3
Well, it happens that when I was in Calgary.
00:07:49 Speaker 3
We were assigned the job.
00:07:52 Speaker 3
Of stopping the transcontinental train at field.
00:07:57 Speaker 2
Ohh, I know that story.
00:07:59 Speaker 2
As a matter of fact, I have it from Walter deals.
00:08:03 Speaker 3
Well, I’m glad you had it.
00:08:03 Speaker 2
And also from Norm Bottrell.
00:08:05 Speaker 3
Yeah, about faking faking the whole thing.
00:08:10 Speaker 2
Yes, yes, he’s playing the the train Porter and.
00:08:16 Speaker 3
Did the boy tell you by the way, that?
00:08:20 Speaker 3
The reaction we had against it was from railroad people who heard the clicks of this thing coming over the rail and realized it wasn’t a passenger train.
00:08:29 Speaker 2
I know I didn’t hear that.
00:08:29 Speaker 3
It was a work.
00:08:30 Speaker 3
Train you know.
00:08:31 Speaker 3
Was a little work train and railroad man spotted that.
00:08:35 Speaker 2
Yes, of course.
00:08:39 Speaker 2
Well, on my my early memories of you put you in Winnipeg, but that was well along.
00:08:46 Speaker 3
Oh yes, so from.
00:08:49 Speaker 3
From Calgary, I went to.
00:08:52 Speaker 3
Well, I might.
00:08:53 Speaker 3
I better explain it to Kelly or you may have this, of course, but that that was the place where Harold Carson came into the thing.
00:09:01 Speaker 2
Yes, of course.
00:09:02 Speaker 3
You heard about this.
00:09:03 Speaker 3
The choir in the Lethbridge station?
00:09:06 Speaker 3
And why?
00:09:07 Speaker 3
In order to sell batteries.
00:09:10 Speaker 3
He was some he was doing a very good business with dry batteries particularly, you know, with HR, Carson Company.
00:09:18 Speaker 3
And he thought if he could only get a lot of radio station and radio sets sold.
00:09:23 Speaker 3
In that area, he could sell a lot of batteries, but the way to get them sold would be put to.
00:09:28 Speaker 2
Get them right.
00:09:28 Speaker 2
Did he start the station in Lethbridge?
00:09:29 Speaker 3
He’s going to.
00:09:31 Speaker 3
No, he bought it from an aviator Jack Palmer by name.
00:09:42 Speaker 3
For a ridiculous price, of course.
00:09:45 Speaker 3
Was considered not of any particular value, no.
00:09:50 Speaker 3
So that was his first station and when he found it that could, that could be a profitable thing.
00:09:57 Speaker 3
He started looking N, you know, but he made his deal with the Calgary Herald and eventually the Edmonton Journal.
00:10:06 Speaker 2
Do you recall chess? How?
00:10:13 Speaker 2
Harold got together with Jim Taylor and Hugh Pearson.
00:10:20 Speaker 2
In some ways that you know, in retrospect, it seems like an unlikely partnership.
00:10:26 Speaker 2
But at the same time, there were some good balances there.
00:10:29 Speaker 2
I’ve heard Jim Taylor described as.
00:10:32 Speaker 2
The gambler of the.
00:10:33 Speaker 2
Group in person is the bookkeeper.
00:10:37 Speaker 2
Yes, and.
00:10:40 Speaker 2
Harold as sort of the entrepreneur.
00:10:44 Speaker 2
The man who got on with.
00:10:45 Speaker 3
It yes, yes, he was the doer.
00:10:49 Speaker 3
I can’t tell you as a matter of known fact, all I can say give you with my own presumption that is that HR, Carson and limited was in the automotive supply supply business in Lethbridge.
00:10:56 Speaker 2
I guess.
00:10:56 Speaker 2
They were.
00:11:06 Speaker 3
The Taylor and Pearson were in the automotive supply business in Edmonton and here was this gap in Calgary you see.
00:11:13 Speaker 3
So they decided to get together and then eventually formed the Taylor Pearson and Carson and Jim Taylor and Hugh Pearson were they were.
00:11:25 Speaker 3
They were working tonight with them.
00:11:25 Speaker 2
They were together in Edmonton.
00:11:26 Speaker 3
They had, yes.
00:11:29 Speaker 3
So it seemed to be a natural thing.
00:11:30 Speaker 3
They they all in the same business.
00:11:35 Speaker 3
It was a good consolidation.
00:11:37 Speaker 3
And as you say, it was an excellent partnership.
00:11:40 Speaker 2
It worked.
00:11:41 Speaker 3
You know.
00:11:42 Speaker 2
The evidence is.
00:11:46 Speaker 2
The evidence is considerable today, yes.
00:11:49 Speaker 3
Well, to get on with this thing by the as you see now, we had three stations.
00:11:55 Speaker 3
And that Harold was sniffing around for more.
00:11:59 Speaker 3
And the thing he looked at next, of course, was the system.
00:12:05 Speaker 3
And symptoms were in consultation they bought.
00:12:13 Speaker 3
CK, CK.
00:12:14 Speaker 2
We were driving.
00:12:14 Speaker 3
You’re telling them you have different call layers.
00:12:16 Speaker 3
Then I forget what they are.
00:12:18 Speaker 3
I can’t remember.
00:12:20 Speaker 3
But anyhow, they got hold of CKCK and I was selected to be its first manager.
00:12:31 Speaker 3
And that’s where.
00:12:35 Speaker 3
That’s where art Belfort.
00:12:43 Speaker 3
Bill Spears came in.
00:12:45 Speaker 3
I inherited them.
00:12:47 Speaker 3
You see, they were on the staff at CKCK.
00:12:47 Speaker 2
Nice CKK.
00:12:50 Speaker 2
It’s interesting how I keep picking up names of people in the in different talks that I.
00:12:57 Speaker 2
Enjoying immensely, having with people like yourself.
00:13:03 Speaker 2
When we talk about CK CK at that time.
00:13:07 Speaker 2
Lyman Pops was.
00:13:09 Speaker 3
Lyman Pots and Lloyd Westmoreland.
00:13:11 Speaker 2
Lloyd Westmoreland.
00:13:12 Speaker 3
Both of those.
00:13:12 Speaker 3
I I hired.
00:13:14 Speaker 2
You must have hired cretsinger.
00:13:17 Speaker 3
Well, I hired Crete away from the opposition station.
00:13:23 Speaker 3
We like them very much, like the look of.
00:13:25 Speaker 3
Them and the.
00:13:26 Speaker 3
We made a deal to get him away from the opposition station.
00:13:32 Speaker 3
And of course, he was a great success.
00:13:35 Speaker 3
We’re very fond of Crick and keep close touch with him now to this day.
00:13:40 Speaker 2
And I guess it wasn’t too long after that time that they.
00:13:46 Speaker 2
Partnership or association developed with Richardson and Winnipeg Jnr.
00:13:52 Speaker 2
And yes.
00:13:55 Speaker 3
Yes, that that followed.
00:13:59 Speaker 3
And here again, it was the systems that.
00:14:04 Speaker 3
That took it.
00:14:05 Speaker 3
Yes, it got it from.
00:14:09 Speaker 3
Friend that come back.
00:14:11 Speaker 2
To Warrior ownership, I guess and.
00:14:15 Speaker 2
And the other person on the company had the operating responsibility.
00:14:18 Speaker 3
Yes, they gave.
00:14:19 Speaker 3
But an operating contract, that’s what they had in Calgary and Edmonton too, with an operating contract.
00:14:28 Speaker 3
At that time, I think it was a 40% deal, which eventually went up to 50% and they eventually gave them a an equity.
00:14:40 Speaker 3
Well, it was just around this point, or possibly a little earlier.
00:14:45 Speaker 3
That Harold realized this the need for representation.
00:14:51 Speaker 3
He’s been working with newspapers.
00:14:53 Speaker 3
He saw how they read, how they work with the resident reps.
00:14:57 Speaker 3
And the sources of national advertising, that’s when we got the idea that that we should.
00:15:02 Speaker 3
Have a rent.
00:15:04 Speaker 3
And that’s why we that’s how all Canada was not, that was not the first name.
00:15:09 Speaker 2
This about it.
00:15:11 Speaker 2
No United broadcast sales and that brought that brought in Gainer and Guy Herbert.
00:15:13 Speaker 3
That’s right.
00:15:15 Speaker 3
And that was first gainer.
00:15:19 Speaker 3
First gainer.
00:15:20 Speaker 3
First, yes, yes.
00:15:21 Speaker 3
And then Guy Laker later Guy Herbert.
00:15:24 Speaker 3
Force Gainer was at that time the manager of the Lethbridge Station and when he was.
00:15:30 Speaker 3
The Sandy to open all Canada.
00:15:35 Speaker 3
And I believe his first account was thread, so a thread.
00:15:41 Speaker 3
The name of the.
00:15:43 Speaker 3
The name of the firm escapes me at the moment, but it’s it’s it must be on the record somewhere.
00:15:48 Speaker 2
Yes, yes.
00:15:51 Speaker 3
First patient national business, we got on solicitation arrest all flows well to get back to myself.
00:16:03 Speaker 3
I was the next the next station we acquired was CKC Hamilton.
00:16:10 Speaker 3
And here again, I was picked from Regina to go down to Hamilton and take it over.
00:16:17 Speaker 3
And I was given a Bill Cranston from at the Edmonton station for my my commercial manager. And so I was at CKOC for.
00:16:30 Speaker 3
A couple of years getting it rolling, we had to build a.
00:16:34 Speaker 3
New transmitter and new studios.
00:16:37 Speaker 3
And better put pretty desperate time for a while there.
00:16:42 Speaker 2
I think it’s, I think you said that.
00:16:46 Speaker 2
At one period and it was about that time, I guess, that that you lived in three different cities within one year.
00:16:53 Speaker 2
Yes, Hamilton.
00:17:01 Speaker 2
You know there there seems to have been, in fact there was.
00:17:06 Speaker 2
A small core of.
00:17:09 Speaker 2
Men like yourself.
00:17:13 Speaker 2
In whom Harold and the company then?
00:17:18 Speaker 2
Small tailor person and Carson broadcast enterprises.
00:17:22 Speaker 2
Had a tremendous amount of confidence because most of you were removed.
00:17:27 Speaker 2
Trouble spot to trouble spot.
00:17:31 Speaker 2
And then ultimately filled in behind yourselves with what might be called resident managers, who stayed put for a while.
00:17:39 Speaker 3
They’re the ones that were able to take it easy and play golf done with all The Dirty work.
00:17:47 Speaker 2
Just in addition to considerable broadcast career, which would take as many days to document.
00:17:56 Speaker 2
Along the way, put developing a hobby.
00:18:00 Speaker 2
To very good use, namely gardening.
00:18:03 Speaker 3
Oh, yes, yes, I was always very fond of gardening and wherever we went, I always had a garden when we were in Hamilton, we lived out at Burlington.
00:18:15 Speaker 3
I got and we had a very nice garden there, gardening on the prairies was very interesting too.
00:18:22 Speaker 3
I picked up a lot of most useful information in Regina.
00:18:27 Speaker 3
Unless that was all done me as as done me in good stead.
00:18:34 Speaker 2
Having grown up in Winnipeg, my impression now of gardening.
00:18:39 Speaker 2
And Winnipeg consisted of.
00:18:43 Speaker 2
Growing dahlias.
00:18:46 Speaker 2
And geraniums.
00:18:50 Speaker 2
Nicotine plants that smell so beautiful on the summer evening after dark.
00:18:53 Speaker 3
Oh, yes, yes, lovely.
00:18:56 Speaker 2
And pansies and miracles and.
00:19:00 Speaker 2
Well, the everything had to be pretty Hardy us in that time.
00:19:03 Speaker 3
But, well, yeah, it’s got to be short season.
00:19:07 Speaker 3
They’ve got to develop very, very quickly, but never anywhere, anywhere have I ever experienced such marvellous soil.
00:19:16 Speaker 2
Really. Yeah.
00:19:16 Speaker 3
And that’s that.
00:19:18 Speaker 2
That black Manitoba gumbo.
00:19:20 Speaker 3
Yes, that’s fantastically four time.
00:19:25 Speaker 3
It’s vastly different from what we have here on this rocky island.
00:19:29 Speaker 2
Yes, yes.
00:19:32 Speaker 2
I would guess that a lot of the natural food value of soil out here is still even washed away by its moist climate.
00:19:44 Speaker 3
For the nutrients to be leached out of the soil.
00:19:50 Speaker 2
How do you?
00:19:52 Speaker 2
Having been away, we wanted to actually retire.
00:19:54 Speaker 3
From I retired in 1965 when I reached the age of 65.
00:20:00 Speaker 3
I’m very convenient way of remembering my age, which is a good thing now that my memory is becoming a little bit dim whatever year it is.
00:20:08 Speaker 3
That’s the age I become in December.
00:20:12 Speaker 2
Well, that’s very good.
00:20:14 Speaker 3
Sorry, because I was born in 19 December 1900, you see.
00:20:18 Speaker 2
Well, having been.
00:20:19 Speaker 2
Away from radio as an active participant, then for that’s what now 13 years.
00:20:28 Speaker 2
What are your feelings about?
00:20:30 Speaker 2
About radio broadcasting today as compared to the way you felt about it, if you ever took time to to think it out in any detail at that at the time that you were actively involved in chasing around from market to market.
00:20:47 Speaker 3
I don’t think I would if I had to do it all over again.
00:20:49 Speaker 3
I don’t think there was.
00:20:50 Speaker 3
One thing that I would want to change.
00:20:56 Speaker 3
It was fun.
00:20:57 Speaker 3
It was.
00:20:57 Speaker 3
It was really fun and nobody ever.
00:21:01 Speaker 3
Held a sense of of working.
00:21:05 Speaker 3
You know our part.
00:21:09 Speaker 3
If we had to stay on the job 1418 hours a day, it it didn’t matter, it would. It was the whole thing was fun.
00:21:18 Speaker 3
And this one.
00:21:20 Speaker 3
Very wise newspaper man once said, when it ceased to be fun.
00:21:27 Speaker 3
Get the hell out.
00:21:28 Speaker 3
It’s time to leave and I the way it was getting that way when I left that the phone was beginning to go out of it in many respects.
00:21:37 Speaker 3
And that.
00:21:38 Speaker 3
We were chasing after.
00:21:43 Speaker 3
In such a desperate fashion, and we were.
00:21:47 Speaker 3
Programming to the lowest common denominator in human intelligence you see, in order to get the the ratings programs, to my mind were.
00:22:00 Speaker 3
Deteriorating, we didn’t seem to have.
00:22:02 Speaker 3
A spark, you know.
00:22:05 Speaker 2
Well, of course you know, I feel the same way, but I think we both recognized that there were.
00:22:14 Speaker 2
There was at least one.
00:22:16 Speaker 2
Fairly valid influence that.
00:22:18 Speaker 2
It started to bring that about and that was the.
00:22:20 Speaker 2
Advent of television.
00:22:22 Speaker 2
Oh yes, yeah.
00:22:23 Speaker 2
Radio almost of necessity had to change.
00:22:27 Speaker 2
In character to assume a different role in the in the household.
00:22:31 Speaker 3
Yes, that’s true. That’s true.
00:22:33 Speaker 2
And programs in the sense that we used to think of programs became television programs.
00:22:39 Speaker 3
Yes, that’s true.
00:22:41 Speaker 2
And radio became more relegated to a service medium and.
00:22:47 Speaker 2
A constant companion, if you like.
00:22:50 Speaker 3
Yes, that’s how I use it now.
00:22:52 Speaker 3
I’m all the time I work, I’ve got FM.
00:22:58 Speaker 3
But oh, we had so much fun.
00:23:01 Speaker 3
We had all such a lot of fun with the.
00:23:03 Speaker 3
With our program development, you know and.
00:23:08 Speaker 3
Our staff meetings, people coming up with bright ideas, working them out, you know.
00:23:15 Speaker 3
Particularly in cfac we.
00:23:19 Speaker 3
We created with records largely imported records.
00:23:24 Speaker 3
A number of.
00:23:27 Speaker 3
Of what you might call programs, programs, things like the the weekly British Band concert, which you had a setting in the park, you know, and Pat Freeman.
00:23:41 Speaker 3
As they announced it.
00:23:41 Speaker 2
I knew that of course.
00:23:43 Speaker 3
At the announcer with his British accent.
00:23:49 Speaker 3
I did the thing called rebuttable. The Blighty program made-up entirely of English musical records.
00:23:57 Speaker 3
We did a thing called the Cafe Franz Joseph.
00:24:02 Speaker 3
Using largely invenies, waltzes and various singers.
00:24:06 Speaker 3
But we we had the setting, we built a setting clearly with voice of an outdoor cafe on the banks of the even saw up a name for this ladies orchestra.
00:24:24 Speaker 3
Well, we we had fun.
00:24:25 Speaker 2
Well, you know, I think part of the fun because I don’t go back.
00:24:30 Speaker 2
In the industry, quite as far as you do, but I started in radio in 1937.
00:24:37 Speaker 2
Which is now 41 years back.
00:24:41 Speaker 2
Part of the fund was occasioned by the fact that we had no precedence to bind us.
00:24:48 Speaker 2
And very little outside AIDS until.
00:24:52 Speaker 2
The flood of transcribed radio programs that we called them at that time.
00:24:58 Speaker 2
Started to come in and.
00:25:00 Speaker 2
And and provide a service apart from that and before that.
00:25:04 Speaker 2
You made everything up every day as you.
00:25:06 Speaker 3
Went along. That’s right, yes.
00:25:09 Speaker 2
And it was fun today, you know, that’s about a couple of generations later.
00:25:16 Speaker 2
It’s much more of a planned.
00:25:19 Speaker 2
President Bond business operating in the different.
00:25:24 Speaker 2
Time in history as a competitor, if you like for television or complementary medium.
00:25:31 Speaker 2
So I try not to be too impatient with today’s radio and try to understand.
00:25:37 Speaker 3
Well, I guess it’s time for one generation ever to understand the other.
00:25:43 Speaker 3
Children are all grown like they consider me a hopeless square.
00:25:47 Speaker 2
Yes, of course.
00:25:48 Speaker 2
So am I.
00:25:51 Speaker 3
But as I say, I wouldn’t change a thing.
00:25:57 Speaker 3
Our people have their early band of brothers, you know, they were so loyal and so.
00:26:03 Speaker 3
I can’t remember ever.
00:26:06 Speaker 3
And those early things, any knife in the back or any jockeying for position?
00:26:14 Speaker 3
That is so common in Business Today.
00:26:17 Speaker 3
The anything that tiny or tiny, electric or bottle or spirits wanted?
00:26:25 Speaker 3
OK, it was OK with any of us, you know, and Harold Carson.
00:26:30 Speaker 3
They’ll never make another one like you.
00:26:32 Speaker 2
Well, I’ve been struck very forcibly by the.
00:26:36 Speaker 2
Extremely high regard with which Harold was held by the people who worked.
00:26:42 Speaker 2
With human forum at that time.
00:26:44 Speaker 3
You can’t describe.
00:26:45 Speaker 2
The people together, he gave them their head and supported them.
00:26:50 Speaker 2
And I have yet to run into anyone in.
00:26:55 Speaker 2
And chasing down the story that has anything.
00:26:59 Speaker 2
High praise to say about an unusual.
00:27:02 Speaker 2
Man Harold Carson was.
00:27:03 Speaker 3
It’s more than that.
00:27:04 Speaker 3
More than that, there’s only one word for it.
00:27:07 Speaker 3
Let’s love.
00:27:08 Speaker 2
Certainly it wasn’t money at that time.
00:27:10 Speaker 2
Because there wasn’t any Europe.
00:27:12 Speaker 3
We we looked.
00:27:13 Speaker 3
Actually looked we looked Harold Carson.
00:27:15 Speaker 3
He was.
00:27:16 Speaker 3
I don’t know whether he was a father figure or what, but.
00:27:20 Speaker 3
He was a.
00:27:23 Speaker 3
How his principle man I know.
00:27:26 Speaker 3
Strictly off the record, I can think of only one man that ever.
00:27:32 Speaker 3
Let them down or turn them down.
00:27:35 Speaker 3
And that was.
00:27:38 Speaker 3
A very poor memory for names.
00:27:40 Speaker 3
What’s his name?
00:27:42 Speaker 3
That got the got the Red Deer license.
00:27:45 Speaker 2
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
00:27:47 Speaker 3
My story, what’s his name?
00:27:52 Speaker 3
But he.
00:27:54 Speaker 3
He let down.
00:27:57 Speaker 3
He actually turned against his own employer, and when he was managing the Edmonton station, turned them into the CBC, made accusations David Johnson jumped on it with great Glee.
00:28:11 Speaker 3
And he got a station license out of it.
00:28:14 Speaker 3
That’s the only case of disloyalty.
00:28:17 Speaker 3
Right.
00:28:19 Speaker 3
Gordon, Henry.
00:28:22 Speaker 3
I remember I knew this destroying this thing.
00:28:28 Speaker 3
I remember when.
00:28:30 Speaker 2
I was a secret of ex as a salesman.
00:28:33 Speaker 2
And then we were three local salesman.
00:28:39 Speaker 2
Tiny came in one day and he said.
00:28:42 Speaker 2
Harold Carson is at the hotel.
00:28:46 Speaker 2
And has asked if I’ll come over and have a drink with them at 5:00 o’clock, he said.
00:28:49 Speaker 2
I thought it might be fun and you might find it interesting if you guys got to know him a little better.
00:28:55 Speaker 2
So we said, sure, we’d like to.
00:29:00 Speaker 2
So after tiny left, that small discussion and before we went to the hotel with Tony at 5:00 o’clock.
00:29:08 Speaker 2
We sort of put our heads together and said, what can we what can we get out?
00:29:12 Speaker 2
Of what can we get out of the company?
00:29:15 Speaker 2
Out of this session and we decided we’ll ask for company cars.
00:29:21 Speaker 2
For the salesman.
00:29:25 Speaker 2
And we did it.
00:29:26 Speaker 2
You know, it was sure mischief was what it was, in retrospect, because we knew we didn’t have a hope in hell.
00:29:34 Speaker 2
We got over and the atmosphere got a little social and Harold.
00:29:39 Speaker 2
As was his pattern was.
00:29:42 Speaker 2
Kind of sitting quietly in a corner and seemingly dozing.
00:29:48 Speaker 2
And we’re having at.
00:29:51 Speaker 2
Him indirectly through tiny on why we should have company cars.
00:29:56 Speaker 2
Tiny as we can see, tiny is getting more and more irritated with us.
00:30:01 Speaker 2
You know that that his boys should turn on the.
00:30:04 Speaker 2
Boss like this?
00:30:06 Speaker 2
And finally, after we run out of steam and pretty well said our fish, Harold just kind of opened his eyes halfway and.
00:30:14 Speaker 2
Looked at us and said no, not at all.
00:30:21 Speaker 2
He has been sleeping.
00:30:22 Speaker 2
He had missed a word.
00:30:24 Speaker 3
Well, I can tell you a little about company cars we had.
00:30:28 Speaker 3
I inherited one when we went to.
00:30:31 Speaker 3
Went to transferred to Hamilton and there was one there and I had the use of.
00:30:36 Speaker 3
It then transferred to Toronto to all Canada Toronto for.
00:30:43 Speaker 3
Less than a year.
00:30:45 Speaker 3
And then.
00:30:47 Speaker 3
To to Victoria.
00:30:51 Speaker 3
But while in Hamilton, as I say, I lived out in Burlington, which went when I had the company car, my wife was more or less isolated, couldn’t get around.
00:30:59 Speaker 3
So I had to buy her a little car and then we had very little money in those days.
00:31:03 Speaker 3
That’s why what I picked up was a little forward runabout were open top.
00:31:07 Speaker 3
You know, when those little things, that and.
00:31:08 Speaker 2
Yes, yes.
00:31:11 Speaker 3
It was pretty ancient.
00:31:13 Speaker 3
And for quite convenient for her, for running into shock and whatnot.
00:31:19 Speaker 3
So when I was.
00:31:20 Speaker 3
Transferred to the to Victoria, where we took over the Victoria station.
00:31:25 Speaker 3
We drove out.
00:31:27 Speaker 3
In this little puddle jumper once, when we got here, that’s the only car we had.
00:31:33 Speaker 3
And at that time, the by that time they’d sold the company car and there where there were new company cars anywhere in the in the outfit well.
00:31:43 Speaker 3
Along about that time.
00:31:46 Speaker 3
Clifford Sifton came out.
00:31:50 Speaker 3
And he wanted to.
00:31:52 Speaker 3
Look at properties in Victoria to get some ideas.
00:31:56 Speaker 3
For his own situation, you know where he lives in Toronto.
00:32:01 Speaker 3
And I was just saying to travel around and all they had to dream around here was Clifford, this tall man, you know, he’s sitting in this miserable little little supper with his knees up on her, and you’d be surprised how many big shots.
00:32:21 Speaker 3
Ran ran around in that.
00:32:23 Speaker 3
Thing anyhow was clippered, but anyhow he saw all he wanted to see.
00:32:28 Speaker 3
I took him everywhere.
00:32:29 Speaker 3
He wanted to go.
00:32:30 Speaker 3
Explain things to him and he seemed to be very grateful.
00:32:34 Speaker 3
But when he got back, he said he sent to hell.
00:32:36 Speaker 3
For once, he checked on the car.
00:32:44 Speaker 3
I thought they bought me a.
00:32:45 Speaker 2
Car I John Ansell brought me.
00:32:51 Speaker 2
A photocopy of an old newspaper story, I guess.
00:32:56 Speaker 2
Vote the reverend.
00:32:59 Speaker 2
Deville, who’s JV I.
00:33:03 Speaker 2
The spelling of the name is not common in my experience.
00:33:06 Speaker 2
He wasn’t by any chance a father of Frank Deville of the old Woodhouse and Hawkins group, but.
00:33:12 Speaker 2
Uncle and uncle?
00:33:14 Speaker 2
Was it?
00:33:14 Speaker 2
Yes, yes.
00:33:16 Speaker 2
Because I knew Frank and Art MacGregor were here.
00:33:19 Speaker 3
Yes, you did it.
00:33:23 Speaker 3
Yes, we, yes, we really.
00:33:23 Speaker 2
Frank is still Frank Isola, the advertising business in Toronto.
00:33:29 Speaker 2
Art died some years ago, so I heard yes.
00:33:33 Speaker 3
Yes, we knew them very well in Calgary.
00:33:36 Speaker 3
As a matter.
00:33:36 Speaker 3
Of fact we originated them onto the network.
00:33:39 Speaker 2
They started they I think they worked at Ashdown didn’t.
00:33:42 Speaker 3
They. Yes, they did, yes.
00:33:46 Speaker 3
The they had all the makings of another Amos and Andy. It was very good, you know, until they they decided the network decided to drop it as a daily strip and like 1/2 hour once a week. And that killed it. They killed it dead.
00:34:03 Speaker 3
Michelle was, but didn’t have the spark.
00:34:06 Speaker 3
From that time on.
00:34:08 Speaker 3
I mean, it was interspersed with Tong songs and music and whatnot, and it lost its character.
00:34:15 Speaker 2
I’ve talked before with.
00:34:19 Speaker 2
Other people in the company back in those years.
00:34:25 Speaker 2
And the picture that I was familiar with becomes.
00:34:30 Speaker 2
The more I talk to people like yourself.
00:34:34 Speaker 2
Of a tremendous pool of creative talent.
00:34:40 Speaker 2
The developed around and in.
00:34:44 Speaker 2
The tailor person.
00:34:46 Speaker 2
Group of stations.
00:34:47 Speaker 3
Oh, yes, yes.
00:34:49 Speaker 2
The list from CWX in Vancouver is as long as your arm, and I’m sure is repeated and only get it again and only station.
00:34:59 Speaker 2
All locations across the country.
00:35:01 Speaker 3
Lyman Potts.
00:35:03 Speaker 2
I see you live and he’s a neighbor of mine in Toronto.
00:35:09 Speaker 3
It’s one of my favorite people.
00:35:13 Speaker 2
Is the most incredible memory for British music British recorded music.
00:35:18 Speaker 3
Well, I told you about this program that we used to do called the blanking program.
00:35:24 Speaker 3
Well, that with his baby, we used to sit together to make out on orders for records from when we sent to the old country for the record.
00:35:34 Speaker 3
And that’s why how he he learned so much about pretty ****.
00:35:38 Speaker 2
Ah, he’s he’s just incredible.
00:35:41 Speaker 2
He’ll tell you who played fourth trumpet in whatever orchestra.
00:35:47 Speaker 2
A particular side.
00:35:48 Speaker 2
Of the record in 1943 or whatever.
00:35:54 Speaker 2
And I remember being in London with him, not with him, but at the same time, about six or seven years ago.
00:36:02 Speaker 2
And we spent the best part of an evening at Lionel at layman’s behalf.
00:36:09 Speaker 2
Chasing down.
00:36:11 Speaker 2
A saxophone player.
00:36:15 Speaker 2
That he had long since thought was dead.
00:36:18 Speaker 2
Who was reported to be playing in some kind of a pit band in one of the theaters?
00:36:23 Speaker 2
Not Freddie Gardner, no.
00:36:26 Speaker 2
I’ve forgotten the name and the name wasn’t important.
00:36:28 Speaker 2
What was important was that Lyman knew of them.
00:36:32 Speaker 2
And knew his entire history.
00:36:38 Speaker 2
However, an incredible number of great people.
00:36:42 Speaker 2
The managers sort of stand out because it was under their direction that so many things happened.
00:36:51 Speaker 2
But the organization, of course, is.
00:36:55 Speaker 2
At large, much more than just managers, it was was everybody.
00:37:00 Speaker 2
Good writers developed people like Fletcher.
00:37:03 Speaker 2
Markel developed out of C KWX or at the coast at that time.
00:37:04
OK.
00:37:07 Speaker 2
Went on to become one of the best.
00:37:11 Speaker 2
Writers and radio drama in North America.
00:37:16 Speaker 3
You have.
00:37:17 Speaker 3
You have the story of the ghost Walker from the trail.
00:37:21 Speaker 3
Have you?
00:37:21 Speaker 3
The ghost Walker from trail?
00:37:26 Speaker 3
Well, whichever.
00:37:28 Speaker 2
But I embraced.
00:37:29 Speaker 3
Would you believe a network program originating in the trail station does sound unlikely?
00:37:35 Speaker 3
It doesn’t, doesn’t it?
00:37:37 Speaker 3
Well, they got together.
00:37:39 Speaker 3
Somebody on the station and you’ll have to get his name from somebody else, because I can’t remember.
00:37:44 Speaker 3
It developed the idea and developed a little theatrical group.
00:37:50 Speaker 3
And they did the most astounding.
00:37:53 Speaker 3
Horror or mystery stories, you know?
00:37:57 Speaker 3
Or ghostly?
00:37:58 Speaker 3
Yes, sort of things, you know.
00:38:01 Speaker 3
And they did this and submitted to CBC and CBC by Joe.
00:38:06 Speaker 3
They bought it, you know.
00:38:08 Speaker 3
And it hit it was on the.
00:38:09 Speaker 3
Network but the.
00:38:16 Speaker 3
The such and such hit the fan when they found them.
00:38:20 Speaker 3
With all these stories were being stolen from punk magazines.
00:38:29 Speaker 3
That put it into that, but all of the ghost Walker was extremely well done.
00:38:34 Speaker 3
You know, markably, well done.
00:38:40 Speaker 2
Well, that’s too bad. They got shot down for that reason because it was good entertainment as long as they weren’t bringing anybody’s copyright they were. They were right.
00:38:52 Speaker 3
Yes, they were thinking the story bodily out of one of the one of these pulp.
00:38:59 Speaker 3
Ghost story magazines, yeah.
00:39:04 Speaker 2
Yes, I’m going from Victoria to Calgary and then on to Lethbridge, where one of the people I want to see is Art Belfort.
00:39:07 Speaker 3
This provision.
00:39:13 Speaker 3
You’d remember him very much, very much so.
00:39:15 Speaker 3
He was my commercial manager when I was the manager of CKCK Regina.
00:39:21 Speaker 3
And matter of fact, I can give you a little story about the art which might amuse you.
00:39:29 Speaker 3
We had one account.
00:39:32 Speaker 3
Called sterling shoes, they have the chain of shoe stores across Western Canada and we had a very good relationship for a while anyhow with their store in Regina and they were regular advertisers with us.
00:39:48 Speaker 3
And that they sponsored a program of fairly good music on Sunday.
00:39:55 Speaker 3
But the opening line sterling shoes are on the air.
00:40:01 Speaker 3
Somehow or other, our announcers got twisted on this, and for two Sundays in the roll it came out shurling stews are on the air.
00:40:12 Speaker 3
And Barfield was absolutely raving with his his contact that the sponsor was raising hell over this, you know, this ridiculous thing.
00:40:23 Speaker 3
And matter of fact, this was in Midsummer when.
00:40:26 Speaker 3
We transferred our.
00:40:27 Speaker 3
Whole operation to the Regina Exhibition grounds.
00:40:33 Speaker 3
And we were all out there and what we call the Glass Studio was an old glass place, so everybody could watch it.
00:40:42 Speaker 3
And Art said, well, you fellows can’t do it.
00:40:46 Speaker 3
I’ll show you.
00:40:46 Speaker 3
It can be.
00:40:48 Speaker 3
I’ll do it myself.
00:40:49 Speaker 3
I’ll do the opening line.
00:40:52 Speaker 3
And so he sat down at the microphone and waiting for the red light, you know, and seconds before the red light.
00:41:00 Speaker 3
My gang.
00:41:02 Speaker 3
Put in front of.
00:41:03 Speaker 3
Him piece big piece of paper with an enormous.
00:41:06 Speaker 3
Black Hand on it.
00:41:08 Speaker 3
And the large words you will say, surely Stew?
00:41:13 Speaker 3
So I’ve looked at this and it latches.
00:41:16 Speaker 3
Ha ha.
00:41:16 Speaker 3
And he crumpled it.
00:41:17 Speaker 3
And threw it away and the red light.
00:41:18 Speaker 3
Went round, he said.
00:41:19 Speaker 3
Surely he’s doing.
00:41:20 Speaker 3
Around here.
00:41:22 Speaker 3
I wish I could.
00:41:23 Speaker 3
Fortunately, we caught him quickly before flow of language erupted.
00:41:31 Speaker 3
Ohh remarkable power of suggestion.
00:41:31 Speaker 2
We used to play some terribles.
00:41:34 Speaker 2
Used to play some terrible tricks.
00:41:38 Speaker 2
And that’s gone out of radio today.
00:41:40 Speaker 2
That was part of the fun which went on behind the scenes that the audience never knew about.
00:41:47 Speaker 2
Like Jack.
00:41:48 Speaker 2
Jack dammit, I think was credited with the classic drug and drapery shop.
00:41:53 Speaker 2
Yes, yes.
00:41:57 Speaker 3
That’s that was one of the best, I think.
00:42:01 Speaker 2
At every station had its I remember in Vancouver when I first went to Vancouver in 1937.
00:42:10 Speaker 2
One of our small little accounts was a a typical West Coast.
00:42:16 Speaker 2
English tea room just around the corner from the station called the Willow Teapot.
00:42:21 Speaker 2
Oh yes.
00:42:22 Speaker 2
And you can imagine what happened to that regularly.
00:42:25 Speaker 2
It came out as a little Peapod, despite of the fact that after getting over the original giggles about that, people did try to do it straight, but at least half of the time.
00:42:37 Speaker 2
That’s the way it would come out.
00:42:42 Speaker 2
I think they went out of business in some despair.
00:42:50 Speaker 3
I’ve only got me in the most trouble was a rugby game in Regina.
00:42:56 Speaker 3
Had to use a Green Man to call the gamer.
00:42:58 Speaker 3
Man is was had.
00:43:02 Speaker 3
Broke his ankle the night before.
00:43:05 Speaker 3
We’re having a green management.
00:43:07 Speaker 3
I suppose you’ve heard this.
00:43:08 Speaker 3
It’s gone through the whole.
00:43:10 Speaker 3
Organization but it so it happens that it rained all that Saturday morning, you know, overnight and all Saturday morning.
00:43:18 Speaker 3
And cleared in time for the game, but it the whole thing was just you can imagine what Regina Gumbo would be like.
00:43:25 Speaker 2
Yes, yes.
00:43:26 Speaker 3
The field is just an awful shape.
00:43:29 Speaker 3
And the two teams, they were just not getting anywhere.
00:43:32 Speaker 3
They couldn’t hang out on the ball.
00:43:35 Speaker 3
And this fellow, matter of fact, his name with Larry Grayburn and he man, he’s managed to motion Picture Theatre and Regina.
00:43:43 Speaker 3
But he knew football and he knew broadcasting because he always used to do his own commercial.
00:43:48 Speaker 3
So he was calling the game for us and he was losing interest.
00:43:51 Speaker 3
It was becoming more dull by the minute because nothing was happening.
00:43:55 Speaker 3
Until finally one of the Regina team did get the ball and he managed somehow to hang on to it and.
00:44:06 Speaker 3
Civil life.
00:44:06 Speaker 3
He was a motorcycle policeman, the big, burly fellow.
00:44:10 Speaker 3
But he got that ball and he got he started to get make some yardage, you know, and.
00:44:16 Speaker 3
Terry came to with a with a, you know, started to really broadcast, he says.
00:44:22 Speaker 3
Big Mac.
00:44:23 Speaker 3
He’s got the ball, he look, he’s got it.
00:44:25 Speaker 3
He’s still got.
00:44:26 Speaker 3
He’s going down the field, he’s made 10 yards, 15 yards, 20 yards.
00:44:30 Speaker 3
I think he’s going to do it.
00:44:31 Speaker 3
Jesus Christ.
00:44:32 Speaker 3
He dropped it.
00:44:36 Speaker 3
And then he went on to.
00:44:39 Speaker 3
Give up a brief resume and of of what?
00:44:43 Speaker 3
Everything else that was happening and then he froze.
00:44:46 Speaker 3
All of a sudden when he turned to me, I was in the box with him.
00:44:49 Speaker 3
He says.
00:44:50 Speaker 3
What did I say?
00:44:50 Speaker 3
Back there, what did I say back there?
00:44:54 Speaker 3
So I.
00:44:56 Speaker 3
I said, brother, you said plenty.
00:44:58 Speaker 3
Meantime, back on the station, the phones were ringing, you know, and they they, the ministerial association of Southern Saskatchewan and took up a petition to have our license cancelled.
00:45:11 Speaker 3
Oh, brother.
00:45:12 Speaker 3
I had to make so many apologies.
00:45:16 Speaker 3
It was a very embarrassing.
00:45:18 Speaker 2
Chest so I don’t overstay my welcome.
00:45:26 Speaker 2
I think it’s about time that I.
00:45:30 Speaker 2
So thank you for digging back into your memory and.
00:45:35 Speaker 3
I’m so.
00:45:35 Speaker 3
Confirmation you want before we pack up our confirmation of other information you had.
00:45:46 Speaker 2
This book that we.
00:45:50 Speaker 2
Expect and plan to materialize into a modest.
00:45:56 Speaker 2
Document will contain, among other things.
00:46:00 Speaker 2
I hope a lot of very good pictures.
00:46:05 Speaker 2
And I’ve been fortunate in getting pictures from a number of sources.
00:46:10 Speaker 2
Some of them are pretty funny.
00:46:11 Speaker 2
It’s hard to realize that all of us looked that young at.
00:46:14 Speaker 2
One time.
00:46:19 Speaker 2
And I’m delighted to find you, in spite of your self acknowledge.
00:46:27 Speaker 2
Accumulation of years, about as busy as you’ve ever been.
00:46:32 Speaker 2
And syndicating columns all over Western Canada on your second low gardening.
00:46:39
Keep it.
00:46:40 Speaker 2
Thank you.
00:46:41 Speaker 2
Thanks very much.
00:46:47 Speaker 1
This interview was recorded in 1978 by **** Meisner.